RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
April 25 to May 1, 2021 Critical race theory -- holding that racism, not liberty, is the core value of American society -- is about to face a reckoning in courts across the country this year, John Murawski reports for RealClearInvestigations. In a spate of lawsuits expected to peak in coming months, parents, teachers, students and public workers allege that it encourages discrimination and other illegal policies targeting whites, males and Christians. Murawski reports: - The challenges come as President Biden has jettisoned a Trump ban on pushing critical race theory in the federal workforce -- and thrown his progressive administration four-square behind "racial equity" to counter "systemic racism," especially in education.
- In one suit, white women allege that a New York City public school diversity trainer told employees: "White colleagues must take a step back and yield to colleagues of color.”
- In another, white men allege that California wildlife bureaucrats featured speakers who said that black people don’t use the outdoors in proportion to their population because of white racism.
- A lawsuit filed by a 12th-grade biracial student and his African American mother says a Nevada charter school taught that “people of color CANNOT be racist.”
- To opponents, the fatal flaw of critical race theory is its factual wrongness. But hovering in the background of these lawsuits is the unresolved question: To what extent does truth provide a defense against charges of discrimination?
San Francisco’s leaders have finally diagnosed a “perilous trifecta” at the root of its crime and squalor: a core troubled population of 4,000 who are at once homeless, psychotic, and addicted. But the city is addressing their plight with ineffective progressive remedies, Christopher F. Rufo reports for RealClearInvestigations. Rufo reports: - To this core troubled “trifecta,” the city has applied the social-scientific remedies of deinstitutionalization, destigmatization, and decriminalization
- There is wide agreement that these strategies haven’t worked.
- Deinstitutionalization: Rather than place people in disfavored psychiatric institutions, the city offers expanded and costly mental health and substance abuse services that the “perilous trifecta” population is unlikely to use.
- Destigmatization: Recovery and sobriety programs are shunned in favor of a “harm reduction” model for drug abusers -- creating an entire infrastructure to service addiction.
- Decriminalization: District Attorney Chesa Boudin has pushed to reduce the county jail population, end cash bail, and decriminalize crimes associated with homelessness like drug consumption, prostitution, and public urination.
- Boudin responded to a car “smash-and-grab” crime wave with a $1.5 million fund for auto glass repair—the literal opposite of the low-tolerance “broken windows” strategy of policing.
- Now Boudin faces a recall movement -- and the city remains a magnet for the troubled homeless, with skyrocketing drug overdoses and its health and criminal justice systems overwhelmed.
Biden, Trump and the Beltway After FBI Abuses, FISA Judge OKs No-Warrant Spying Washington Examiner
Biden’s Scuttled Stances on War, Militarism, CIA,Intercept
Ex-Obama Education Aide Charged in $200K Charter School Theft CNN Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Fed Student Loan Books Called Cooked by a Half-Trillion
Wall Street Journal
For years, Congress, various administrations and federal watchdogs have systematically made the student loan program look profitable when in fact defaults were becoming more likely, this article reports. The problem: the federal budget assumes the government will recover 96 cents of every dollar borrowers default on. In reality, it is likely to recover just 51% to 63% of defaulted amount, according to a report prepared by a former JPMorgan executive. The final cost to taxpayers could reach $500 billion. “If you accounted this way in the private sector, you wouldn’t be in business anymore,” said Betsy DeVos, the former Education Secretary who commissioned the report. “You’d probably be behind bars.” The Cartel 18-Wheelers Unloading Migrants and Drugs
Center for Immigration Studies
Human-smuggling coyotes and drug-smuggling cartels have created a brazen alliance along the southern border. This article reports that 18-wheel tractor-trailer rigs and trucks of all sizes pull right up to the river near the border town of Presidio, Texas, to unload people and drug cargo in broad daylight. Police chases of immigrant transport vehicles are now commonplace in towns further inland. And Border Patrol agents, largely unreinforced despite new circumstances, are chasing groups through the desert day and night, losing most and strained beyond capacity to impact what’s happening, they say. In one recent notable incident, five vehicles blasted in from the Mexican side not far south of Sierra Blanca, filled with marijuana, meth — and 87 immigrants. Border Patrol caught that convoy. “But much more often,” Todd Bensman reports, “Border Patrol only ever learns about these events from tracks that churn the dirt, video recordings from hidden cameras, and distant dust plumes.” Online Crime Ring Grifted Mom-and-Pop Investors
Gizmodo
Along with the coronavirus, the past year brought a tidal wave of new online investors, this article reports, as apps like Robinhood drew millions of first-time users, hungry for opportunity in an otherwise-bleak pandemic economy. Naturally, scams, Ponzi schemes, and cryptocurrency ripoffs ensued. This article focuses on one shady outfit, Quantum Code, to show that “even the shallowest get-rich-quick schemes often grow from deep, elaborate roots.” The people behind Quantum Code – including Antonio Giacca, an Italian music producer and marketer living in Florida who pleaded guilty to criminal wire fraud charges in 2020 – were allegedly part of a ring of prolific internet predators who joked about targeting the elderly and made tens of millions pushing cryptocurrency cons. Inside the Online Slander Industry
New York Times
Here’s how the slander industry works, according to this article. Gripe sites “like BadGirlReports.date, BustedCheaters.com and WorstHomeWrecker.com,” allow often anonymous users to attack alleged wrongdoers. Search engines often amplify these attacks. One woman in Ohio was the subject of so many negative posts that Bing declared in bold at the top of her search results that she “is a liar and a cheater” — the same way it states that Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States. For roughly 500 of the 6,000 people we searched for, Google suggested adding the phrase “cheater” to a search of their names. In response, a range of “reputation management” companies offer to help people get “undesirable information” about themselves removed from their search engine results. The “gold package” one company offers costs cost $699.99. “We soon discovered a secret, hidden behind a smokescreen of fake companies and false identities,” Aaron Krolik and Kashmir Hill report. “The people facilitating slander and the self-proclaimed good guys who help remove it are often one and the same.” Coronavirus Investigations Files: Chinese Military Tied to Wuhan Bat Virus Studies
Daily Mail
Scientists studying bat diseases at China’s maximum-security laboratory in Wuhan were engaged in a massive project to investigate animal viruses alongside leading military officials – despite their denials of any such links. Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that a nationwide scheme, directed by a leading state body, was launched nine years ago to discover new viruses and detect the "dark matter" of biology involved in spreading diseases. The U.S. State Department has raised concerns over risky experiments to manipulate coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab and suggested researchers fell sick with covid-like symptoms weeks before the outbreak emerged more widely in the Chinese city. Cuomo Aides Spent Months Hiding Nursing Home Deaths
New York Times
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s efforts to hide the actual number of people who died in New York nursing homes were far more extensive than previously known. Drawing on documents and interviews this article reports that during a period that lasted at least five months: Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aides engaged in a sustained effort to prevent the state’s own health officials, including the commissioner, Howard Zucker, from releasing the true death toll to the public or sharing it with state lawmakers, these interviews and documents showed. A scientific paper, which incorporated the data, was never published. An audit of the numbers by a top Cuomo aide was finished months before it became publicly known. Two letters, drafted by the Health Department and meant for state legislators, were never sent. The actions coincided with the period in which Mr. Cuomo was pitching and then writing a book on the pandemic, with the assistance of his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, and others. Other Coronavirus Investigations Best and Worst Places to Be as Variants Outrace Vaccines Bloomberg
Vax CEO Sold $10m in Stock Before Co. Ruined J&J Doses Washington Post
How We Survived COVID-19 In Prison, Marshall Project
How Pfizer Makes Its Vaccine, New York Times |
